Adnax Publications

(1608-1674)

Short Biography

Portrait of John Milton c1629 (21)

BirthJohn Milton was born at the sign of the Spread Eagle in Bread Street, London,
eight years before the death of Shakespeare. His grandfather, Richard Milton,
owned land near Oxford. His father, also John, settled in London, where he set
up business as a
law scrivener.
He was also a keen musician and composer of music.
His mother, Sara, bore six children of whom three died in infancy. The eldest,
Anne, became Mrs Phillips, and Mrs Agar by a second marriage, and it was her
son, Edward Phillips, who was both taught by and became John Milton's first
biographer. The youngest, Christopher (born 1615,7), became a judge and was
knighted. His father must have been financially successful because he sent both
his sons to be educated at the university of Cambridge, and retired in 1632 (24)
to Horton near Windsor.

EducationHe was educated initially at home by
Thomas Young, a Scottish
Presbyterian,
of whom Milton writes in a Latin elegy: 'Under his guidance I penetrated into
the recesses of the Muses, saw the sacred and green places of Parnassus, and
drank the Pierian cups', ie he introduced him to the writing of poetry. He was a model scholar from an early age, sitting up late to study, and showing an early gift for writing verse. His education continued at
St Paul’s School,
where he befriended Charles Diodati, the nephew of Giovanni Diodati, who made
the Italian version of the Bible in 1607. Of his early education, Milton himself
writes: 'My father destined me while yet a little boy for the study of humane
letters, which I seized with such eagerness, that from the twelfth year of my
age I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight; which indeed
was the first cause of injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were
also added frequent headaches. All which not retarding my impetuosity in
learning, he caused me to be daily instructed, both at the grammar-school and
under other masters at home and then when I had acquired various tongues, and
also not some insignificant taste for the sweetness of philosophy, he sent me to
Cambridge.' The 'various tongues' acquired were Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and
Italian.

CambridgeIn 1625 (17) he entered
Christ College, Cambridge, where he gained the nickname ‘the Lady of Christ’s’. He appears to have been unimpressed with the educational standards of Cambridge, and argued with his first tutor. He
writes to Charles Diodati, in a typically defiant spirit: 'At present I care not
to visit the reedy Cam, nor does regret for my forbidden rooms grieve me. Nor am
I yet in the humour to bear the threats of a harsh master, and other things
intolerable to my disposition. If this be exile...then I refuse neither the name
nor the lot of a runaway, and gladly I enjoy my state of banishment.' His tutor
was replaced.

Early poetryWhile still at Cambridge, he wrote elegies and epigrams in Latin, and sonnets in Italian and English, and in 1629 (21) composed his ode
On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, an accomplished work which he later placed at the beginning of his
Poems by Mr Milton, in English and Latin (1645, 37).

Financial support and further poetryAfter leaving Cambridge in 1632 (24), he took up residence at his parent's house in Horton,
Buckinghamshire, where he continued his studies.
His lyric poems, L’Allegro and
Il Penseroso
(1632, 24) date from this period, and reflect something of his delight in this country
retreat, where he mainly lived until 1638 (30). Here, he wrote the
masques,
Arcades and
Comus, at the invitation of the composer and musician
Henry Lawes, the latter piece for the inauguration of the
Earl of Bridgewater as Lord President of Wales,
and performed at Ludlow Castle, Shropshire, in 1634 (26) with Lawes playing the Attendant Spirit and the Earl’s children the other parts.
Comus was subsequently published (1637, 29) at Lawes instigation. It was well received and particularly eulogised by
Sir Henry Wotton,
who wrote that it was 'a dainty piece of entertainment, wherein I would much
commend the tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Doric
delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen
yet nothing parallel in our language'. In 1637 (29) he
contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a motley collection of elegies on the death of Edward King, a graduate of Christ Church drowned at sea, amplifying the theme into a reflection on the question of the existence of evil and Divine providence.

Milton's house Horton, etching F.S.Walker, 1895

TravelHe left England in April, 1638 (30), visiting France, where he met
Hugo Grotius, and Italy, where he was welcomed into the neo-Platonic academies at Florence, and quickly established his reputation as ‘al grande poeta Inghilese, Giovanni Milton, Londra’ with the quality of his Latin and Italian verse. He visited Rome and then Naples, where he was favoured with the attentions of
Giovanni Battista Manso,
who had been the friend and protector of
Torquato Tasso. Returning to Florence, he found and visited the famous
Galileo, at that time old and placed under effective house arrest by the Inquisition. He stayed for a month in Venice, from whence he shipped home the books and volumes of music he had collected during his year in Italy. On his way home to England he paid a visit to Geneva, where he met the father of his friend, Charles Diodati, and
first heard of his friend’s death the previous year.
He arrived back in England in August, 1639 (31).

The schoolmasterHe set up a school (1639, 31), at first taking the two young sons of his recently deceased sister,
John and Edward Phillips, as students, then the sons of friends and noblemen.

MarriageIn 1642 (34) he married Mary Powell, the 17 year old daughter of a family to whom Milton’s father had lent money some years previously, and from whom Milton himself was receiving interest of £24 per annum on the loan. She stayed with him for only three weeks, however, leaving to make a visit to her parents at Forest Hill, near Oxford, and failing to return. She also failed to respond to his several letters, and, when he sent a servant to enquire after her, his servant was rudely rebuffed. It is possible that the outbreak of
Civil War at this time made her return more difficult, and it is certainly true that his wife’s family were staunch
Royalists, while Milton’s sympathies lay with the
Parliamentarians, for whom he became an important pamphleteer and apologist.

PamphletsOn his return to England, Milton made
the decision to enter into the struggle between King and Parliament on the
side of the Parliamentarians. He writes in a letter: 'I resolved, though I was then meditating
other matters, to transfer to this struggle all my genius and all the
strength of my industry.' He produced twenty five pamphlets over the next
twenty years, defending liberty, religious, domestic, and civil. His first pamphlet , Of Reformation
touching Church Discipline in England, and the causes that hitherto have
hindered it, was published in 1641 (33), and was followed by others
on the same subject with the overall stated objective of freeing the land
of 'this impertinent yoke of Prelaty under whose inquisitorious and
tyrannical duncery no free and splendid wit could flourish'. A series of pamphlets on
divorce, probably partly
motivated and certainly informed by his own marital problems, followed. The first, the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
Restor'd to the good of both sexes, from the bondage of Canon Law
(1643, 35) argued in favour of divorce on grounds of incompatibility.
It was promptly attacked by another, anonymous pamphleteer, and Milton penned
Colasterion
(Greek for instrument of punishment) in reply, in which he observed : ‘I mean not to dispute philosophy with this pork, who never read any’'.
In 1643 (35) a strict ordinance governing publication of printed matter
was introduced by the largely Puritan parliament. Milton's response was to pen the Areopagitica, a
speech to the Parliament of England in favour of the
liberty of unlicensed printing. His pamphlet,
On the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649, 41), published just before the execution of
Charles I, gave grounds for regicide.
Milton argued that men are born free, and that the power of kings is derivative, committed to them in trust by the people for the common good. If a king acted as a tyrant it was, therefore, justifiable to depose him, statements which were,
of course, at complete odds with Charles I’s view that kings ruled by divine right. The last
published pamphlet, A ready and easy way to establish a free
Commonwealth, appeared in March, 1660 (52), just before the
return of Charles II from exile and the restoration of the monarchy.

King Charles shown as inspired directly by God:
frontispiece to the Eikon Basilike

First collected edition of his poetryPoems of Mr John Milton, both English and Latin,
was published in 1645 (37) by
Humphrey
Mosely, who had recently published Edmund Waller with great success.
Moseley writes: 'Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve
of the age by bringing into the light as true a birth as the Muses have
brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote, whose poems in these English
ones are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled.' The book included sonnets, psalm paraphrases, the masks Arcades
and Comus, the odes Il Penseroso and L'Allegro,
and the epitaph Damonis (in Latin), mourning the death of his
friend Charles Diodati.

His wife returnsHis wife returned to him in 1645 (37), and she thereafter bore him 4 children before she died giving birth.

Official appointment in Cromwell's governmentIn 1649 (41), he was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues to
Cromwell’s Council of State, which involved him in the day to day affairs of government, and in its dealings with
foreign powers. He was given the task of replying to the Eikon Basilike (the Royal Image), a pamphlet eulogising the
king as a saint and martyr which had appeared soon after his execution and which
was generally taken to have been
written by the king himself, though John Gauden, subsequently Bishop of
Worcester, later claimed to have written it. Milton replied with the
Eikonoklastes (the Image Breaker), taking apart the rosy picture painted by the
Eikon, and enumerating Charles’ faults in a dispassionate and matter of fact way. Later in the same year another pamphlet,
Defensio Regia contra Populum Anglicanum
(A Defense of the King against the People of England),
commissioned by Charles II in exile in the Low Countries, appeared. It was written by the noted scholar
Salmasius. Milton was again asked to reply, and his
Defensio Populo Anglicano etc (Defense of the People of England) followed,
demonstrating scorn of Salmasius' Latin, of his scholarship, and contempt
for his intelligence. Salmasius himself died shortly afterwards, and it was left open to Milton to claim unopposed that he had broken his opponent by his arguments.
The Council of State rewarded him with a vote of thanks and money, and his
Continental reputation was greatly enhanced. A response to Milton’s
Defensio Populo appeared subsequently, written by an Anglican
clergyman. The Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum
(The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven) was full of personal abuse towards
Milton himself, and Milton took delight in replying with
Defensio Secundo, in which he wrote extensively about himself in a humane and sympathetic way which made the abuse of his adversary seem ludicrous, malicious and misguided.

Oliver Cromwell portrait by Samuel Cooper

BlindnessIn the course of his work for the government, his eyesight had begun to fail, and by 1651 (43) he was completely blind.

Second marriageHe nevertheless continued to work as Latin Secretary, and in 1656 (48) he married Katherine Woodcock, who bore him a son in 1657 (49). Both mother and son died shortly after the birth, however. His sonnet,
Methought I saw My Late Espousèd Saint, refers to this Katherine.

Death of Cromwell and restoration of the monarchyCromwell died in 1658 (50), and was given a state funeral, only for his body to be dug up and hoisted on the gibbet at
Tyburn at the restoration of the monarchy
in 1661 (53). Milton went into hiding, and, when found, was briefly imprisoned.

Paradise LostHis major work,
Paradise Lost, was issued in ten books in 1667 (59). It
is, of course, one of the universally recognised classics of the English language.
Stopford Brooke gives an idea of the esteem in which the poem was held by
later critics. Writing in 1879, he comments on the following lines from
the poem:

The fig tree, not that kind
for fruit renown'd,But such as at this day to Indians known
In Malabar or Decan spreads
her armsBranching so broad and long, that in the groundThe bending twigs take root, and daughters growAbout the mother tree, a pillared shadeHigh overarch't, and echoing walks between.

'Fulness of sound, weight of march, compactness of
finish, fitness of words to things, fitness of pauses to thought, a strong grasp
of the main idea while other ideas play around it, power of digression without
loss of power to return, equality of power over vast spaces of imagination,
sustained splendour when he soars, a majesty in the conduct of thought, and a
music in the majesty which fills it with solemn beauty, belong one and all to
the style; and it gains its highest influence on us, and fulfils the ultimate
need of a grand style in being the easy and necessary expression of the very
character and nature of the man. It reveals Milton, as much, sometimes even more
than his thought.' But faults are also recognised: 'It is often, not only
needlessly, but as it were of set purpose, involved... It loses freedom of
movement in its involutions; it delays too long, as it winds in and out, to
express the thought or the image; it is rarely brief, even where brevity would
be te life of thought. It is troubled with ellipses, and the inversioins are
sometimes, even when they are deliberate, wearisome. The Latinisms and forms of
expression belonging to other languages are frequent, and have been much blamed,
but they are a true part of the style, and the natural property of the man. But
blame as we like, one thing is true, the style is never prosaic. The poetic form
was Milton's native tongue.'

Illustration for Paradise Lost by Gustave Doré
(1832-1883)

Third marriageHe married again in 1663 (55) to Elizabeth Minshull, who was 24 at the time.

Final worksHis final poetic works,
Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes, were published in 1671 (63),
the first describing Christ's temptation in the desert, and the second
Samson's blindness and ultimate triumph in destroying the temple of the
Philistines, with clear parallels to Milton's own blindness and the court
of Charles II. His History of Britain and a Latin Accidence
were published in 1669 (61), a Treatise on Christian Doctrine and
his Artis Logicae in 1672 (64), and a Tract on True Religion
in 1673 (65). In 1673 he also reissued his earlier poems, with some
additions, and, in the following year, a translation from the Latin of the
Declaration of the Poles on the Election of John Sobieski,
probably as a result in his interest in the idea of the election of kings.

DeathHe ended his days in a small house near Bunhill Fields,
where he was frequently visited by admirers, including the Poet Laureate
of the day, John Dryden, and foreign dignitaries who came to see the
author of the Defensio Populo Anglicano. He died alone with his wife and a maid in 1674 (66) without pain or emotion.
According to testimony at the time no one in the room noticed his passing.

Milton! Thou shouldst be
living at this hour;England hath need of thee: she is a fenOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,Fireside, the horoic wealth of hall and bower,Have forfeited their ancient English dowerOf inward happiness. We are selfish men.Oh! Raise us up, return to us again;And give us manners, freedom, virtue, power.Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart:Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,So didst thou travel on life's common wayIn cheerful godliness; and yet thy heartThe lowliest duties on herself did lay.